Round Robin Rebels

December 9, 2013

I hope you have had a chance to read all of our blogs about our journey through this round robin quilt project. I know I've learned a thing or two from reading everyone else's thought process through each round. And don't forget to check out the article in the Feb. 2014 issue of American Patchwork & Quilting along with the additional videos at allpeoplequilt.com.

So, here we are with our final round, and this week we are all focusing on Terry's quilt "Kaleidoscope". To see what everyone else did, check out their blogs this week!

I know that Terry likes brighter colors than I typically work in, but when I opened the box with this quilt in it, my first reaction was to reach for a pair of sunglasses!

{ Terry's quilt when I received it }

This quilt was so cheerful and happy right out of the box with the big red "lips" on white in the center of the quilt, the playful borders that were added by Gudrun and Kari. I just wanted to box it all back up and call it done because I didn't think it needed a thing added.

But the rules were that we each had to add something to the quilt.

So I snapped a few pictures of it, imported it into Illustrator, and started playing around with different borders. Because Kari's border was wider and on two sides, I wanted to balance it out by adding wide borders to the opposite sides. This was my first mock up idea....

{ Terry's quilt - MockUp 1 }

Although I really liked this border, I was afraid that it was too much and might take over the whole quilt. I still felt that it needed NOTHING, but if I HAD to add a border, it needed to be curvy to keep the playful feel of the quilt going.

On Gudrun's quilt I really liked the way that Kari had done the curved piping border, so I used that as my inspiration for the second mockup....

{ Terry's quilt - MockUp 2 }

(Yes, my original idea included the butterflies, but ah well..... when you run out of time to complete something, you just have to let some things go, right??)

With so much of the gray plaid in the previous border, and because Terry had included so much fabric, I thought this definitely needed to be scrappy to pull the red and turquoise out to the edge. AND it was the last round, so I felt pretty comfortable cutting into the fabric, which was not the case with the previous quilts. I pulled out all the reds and cut several strips in various widths from from each fat quarter, then arranged them into one long section and started sewing them together.

I did the same thing with the turquoise fabrics. I toyed with the idea of placing a scrappy gray border next to the plaid one, but decided not to.

Looking at this picture in hindsight, I wonder if I made the right decision, but time was running out so I went with my original idea and just swapped the placement of the red and turquoise. To tone down the red, I added a thin bias strip of the white background fabric in the seam when I stitched the red and turquoise strips together.

A word of advice: When you are working with pieced sections like these, it is very important to baste along the edges to keep the seams intact. Especially if they are along the outer edge of the quilt. I also used a template to mark and baste along the seamline before stitching these curved seams.

This is how it looked after adding all the pieced borders.

But I still felt like it was missing something, and I finally realized that what was bothering me was the large areas of white and the lack of turquoise in the center section. I struggled with this..... Do I go with my gut and add something to what was already there? Would I offend Terry if I added to her center block? Should I just leave it and let the machine quilter fill it in?

I went back to the original email that Gudrun sent out and reread the general rules which said "The next designer makes the next step, which could be borders around the whole block, 3 sides, 2 sides or whatever she feels should come next. No rules, no set sizes….total creative freedom!!" Well, I felt that what needed to come next was to add turquoise squares inside the "lips", so I did. And I loved it! It made all the difference and pulled the whole thing together so nicely.

This entire experience was such a blessing to me..... To have an opportunity to challenge myself and create with total freedom was awesome. And to rub elbows with these wonderful ladies was even better! Like I keep saying, I'm ready to go again! Bring it on!

We would love to hear your comments and thoughts about our Round Robin project, or share about your own round robin experiences. Visit our facebook page, Round Robin Rebels, or leave some comments for us!